


love cannot come here

by superreyes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superreyes/pseuds/superreyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is it bad luck to be married over death? Her family deserves their vengeance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love cannot come here

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration taken from Sylvia Plath's **Event**
> 
> _A small white soul is waving, a small white maggot._  
>  My limbs, also, have left me.  
> Who has dismembered us? 

Roslin sits at the window and watches the water. Her family is honest with her, very honest. She does not want to go through with it, but she will; she will do as she’s told. Crying, she says she does not want there to be death. Crying, she is betrothed.

She knows that they are offering her up, the one the Lord Edmure will like. The one that will catch them all off guard, perhaps. The Rosby girl, meant to soften their guests; a happy affair before the slaughter.

This one has a talent for music, they say sometimes. Give her good music at the wedding. Give her music she’ll remember.

Before the wedding, Roslin Frey used to sing all the time.

Bad luck for an already small voice.

 

-

 

She’s happy when she sees him. Lord Edmure, with his thick, auburn hair. The Tully hair that she knows of; the hair that their children will have. Her small nose, his hair, and perhaps the blue eyes; blue eyes of the river. She’s happy when she sees him.

Roslin is the gift, death wrapped in a veil, smothered in the bridal cloak, swaddled in Tully colors. Disguised in gentleness. Uncomfortable peace. Roslin wonders what will happen to their marriage once the slaughter begins. She wishes her mother were here, to help her through the blood she conceals, to hold her by the hand as she turns into a Tully in the moments, the hours before they take him away again.

She first comes to him in blue lace; she knows she is small and thin and so she prays he will like her.

Happy, afraid, she cries for him. _“I weep for joy, my lord.”_

 

-

 

The music is horrible, but Roslin never says so. She was promised music, and so music she is given. For that, she is grateful, and yet she weeps when she remembers.

All through it, she smiles and smiles. Only sometimes is it forced, when she remembers. Her heart pounds with the awful drums. 

_Boom_ , it goes, _doom_ , it replies.

_Doom_ , she thinks, and smiles as she feeds her husband. _He’s so happy_ , she knows. He kisses her often between sips of wine and little bites of the food they share. She kisses him, too. She flows, easy like the water on a pleasant day when the sky is the bluest blue. Plays and lives the part of the happy bride. He tells a joke and she laughs.

_Boom_ , goes the drum. _Doom_ , her heart replies.

 

-

 

She’s little and she looks down at the water below, rushing underneath their home. Living in twin castles, but not being a princess. White shape runs underneath the surface of the water, the body of a fish, perhaps.

No one quite remembers if Roslin was a happy child or not; they remember that she was pretty, that she was always pretty even with that small gap between her teeth. Her smiles are shy, but always heartfelt.

The sight of a dead fish strikes her heart hard, the little Frey girl, the fifth daughter, the only daughter her mother had that lived. Their little blessing. A white shape, a small soul gone. Roslin has always liked fish.

 

-

_Close your eyes and think of the river_. The river carries you the same way, but with gentler hands. The bedding will be over soon. She cannot count how many beddings she’s seen, how many times she’s watched women be carried away by a tide of laughing hands. It will be over soon. The king will be dead, and his lady mother. Roslin cries, and cries and cries as she is hauled over a stranger’s shoulder, taken away to be shut up in her room while blood seeps into the ground.

_Close your eyes_.

“Bed them! Bed them!”

White as a bedsheet.

Her shoe is gone, some lace torn. She lies on top of death, her room over a slaughter, her maidenhead given to a man with a dead family.

Over the blue water, her wedding turns red, and red and red. Bad luck to be married over slaughter.

Should she pray for them?

 

-

 

One moment of peace before they turn him into a prisoner. And the deed is done. The doors are locked. She bled red but his eyes are blue; river blue and Tully blue. Beneath them, red. Below, dead.

He kisses her forehead. Her soul wavers, flowing toward him, through the water.

“It’s awfully noisy outside that window,” he says, holding her.

“Yes, it is . . .”

“The men have gotten into a fight, perhaps?” he muses.

Roslin feels cold. “Mayhaps.”

“But we are safe up here, my lady.” He kisses her. “My wife.”

Below them, red.

 

-

 

This is vengeance, she is told. This is how we reclaim our strength, little one. Do you understand? The debt must be repaid - is what they say. You could have been a queen, the tiny queen in the north in Winterfell where the snow falls heavy; you could have been married to the winter. Winter is coming! Not anymore. You could have been a queen, or any of your sisters.

This is how the debt is repaid, sweetling. The king did not think you were good enough, does that not insult you?

_Vengeance_ , she says to herself in the mirror with a fishing net over her head; her makeshift veil. _My sisters deserve their vengeance_. She hides her tears behind the veil. It's hard to say who she cries for.

 

-

 

A fish passes dead under the Crossing, but she’s locked away. Not locked up, but kept away from him. When she touches her belly, she thinks of him. Her fish was taken away, pulled out of the river, pulled away from her body. 

 

_They ripped us in half before we were a whole_.

-

 

"My lady," he says through the bars.

She touches his hand; doesn't care about the dirt and grime under his nails, or how tired the river in his eyes runs. "My lord."


End file.
